NEW YORK & BRISTOL, Conn.—The 2020 NFL season is getting ready to enter its most exciting time, and there are some new plans for how fans will be able to watch these important games.

First, the NFL released an update to its Week 16 schedule, announcing that three games will be played on Saturday, Dec. 26. The first two games, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. the Detroit Lions and the Miami Dolphins vs. the Las Vegas Raiders, will take broadcast exclusively on the NFL Network. The third game, the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Arizona Cardinals, will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch.

This is the first game this season that Amazon Prime Video has had exclusively; while the weekly Thursday Night Football games are available on Amazon Prime Video, they are also normally broadcast on Fox. 

All of these games will be available through all NFL digital properties, the teams’ mobile properties and Yahoo Sports mobile. All of the team’s local stations will also carry the games.

The other announcement of new NFL broadcast strategies came from ESPN, which announced it will use its MegaCast production for its coverage of the NFL Wildcard game in January, providing a multichannel experience. This will include, for the first time, the teenage-targeted Freeform network.

ESPN and ABC will simulcast the traditional telecast; ESPN 2 and Freeform will produce their own viewing experiences, including separate commentators and format, which will be announced in the coming weeks. ESPN Deportes will air the Spanish-language offering.

In addition, ESPN announced that ABC will simulcast two Monday Night Football contests in December—the Buffalo Bills vs. the 49ers on Dec. 7 and the Bills vs. the New England Patriots on Dec. 28.

WASHINGTON—Public television is seeking an exemption for noncommercial educational licensees from the ATSC 1.0-3.0 simulcast mandate that’s part of the FCC’s November 2017 authorization of over-the-air transmission of Next-Gen TV.

Representatives from America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service met with the media advisor in the office of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai April 26 to make the appeal.

The group, collectively called "PTV,: told the FCC that the exemption is “warranted and essential” because of the unique mission, structure, governance, finance, history, geographic layout and regulatory treatment of noncommercial educational stations.

“The regulatory certainty of an exemption will ensure that PTV stations can invest confidently in their futures knowing that they will be able to serve their local communities in innovative ways based on their unique needs and circumstances,” the group said in a document filed with the commission regarding the meeting.

[Read: Research: Americans Want Public Broadcasting To Provide Earthquake Early Warnings]

The group told the FCC that “the driving purpose” of PTV stations is to serve the public in their local communities. In 19 states, that means a PTV station serves its entire state regardless of DMA boundaries. Often such stations, like WIIQ in Demopolis, Ala., are “sited far from any potential simulcasting partners,” the document said.

Similarly, 57 university licensees are located at their parent institution, such as WUNC in Chapel Hill, N.C., and are far away from possible simulcast partners. In 89 instances, licensees serve “some of the most rural, remote, and isolated parts of the country,” such as KAWE in Bemidji, Minn., “where commercial counterparts often do not exist,” the document said.

While the PTV group asked for the exemption, it told the agency that licensees “have no interest, and nothing to gain, in leaving their viewers behind.”

PTV stations along with their community advisor will examine many factors “to determine when it is appropriate and in the communities’ best interests to transition to ATSC 3.0,” the document said. They include items, such as surveys of dual-mode receiver penetration in communities, voluntary MVPD ATSC 3.0 adoption and the availability of low-cost converter devices.

Not only would the exemption make it possible for PTV to leverage the many benefits of ATSC 3.0 to better serve the public, but it also will give the 43 percent of public stations that will be repacked –many of which are in rural locations—the confidence “to make supplemental out-of-pocket investments” in equipment with ATSC 3.0 capabilities. Similarly, those that aren’t being repacked but are working with ageing gear can confidently plan for Next-Gen TV as they replace their infrastructure, it said.

The document reminded the agency that PTV stations receive most of their revenue from individual donations and “therefore have every incentive to closely align their transition to the Next Generation standard with their audience’s needs and capabilities.” 

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

WASHINGTON—The American Television Alliance has reiterated its position asking the FCC to reconsider three separate objections it previously raised to the commission’s ATSC 3.0 Order authorizing Next-Gen TV broadcast service in reply comments filed April 23 with the agency.

ATVA is asking the FCC to issue an order on reconsideration that requires separate negotiations for first-time ATSC 3.0 signal carriage by MVPDs, mandates LPTV and translator stations to simulcast ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals and makes stations provide viewers and MVPDs with prior notice before being allowed to degrade their signal format or picture quality.

ATVA originally petitioned the FCC March 5 to reconsider its November 2017 ATSC 3.0 order asking the commission to address the same three issues. 

[Read: ATVA Files Petition For Limited Reconsideration of ATSC 3.0 Order]

In this week’s filing, ATVA argued the FCC should not reject its petition for reconsideration, despite its presentation of the same arguments in earlier proceedings, because it “believe[s] that aspects of the ATSC 3.0 Order constitute a ‘material error’….”

The FCC can “grant a petition for reconsideration relying on arguments previously raised, so long as the petitioner demonstrates ‘material error or omission in the original order,’” the filing said. “If the Commission comes to agree with us, no legal barrier prevents it from granting reconsideration.”

In their opposition to the petition for reconsideration, broadcasters have said “marketplace incentives” will prevent them from engaging in the three practices to which ATVA objects. “We have always been highly skeptical of this claim,” the reply comments said.

The reconsideration process gives the FCC the chance “to address these issues despite broadcasters’ promises.” 

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.  

NEW YORK—Vimeo today announced a pair of new tools—Simulcast and Publish to Social—to help producers more easily blanket social media with their content.

Simulcast

Simulcast makes it possible for live events from the Vimeo platform to be simultaneously streamed on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Periscope. Publish to Social enables producers to publish their content natively to Facebook and YouTube with a single click. Both are available to members of specific paid Vimeo plans, the company said.

“Our new social distribution tools will give Vimeo creators a wider audience, deeper engagement and a fundamentally simplified distribution process,” said Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud in a press release.

Simulcast eliminates the need for producers to send separate streams to each desired social media platform, reducing overall bandwidth use and associated costs. Live streams distributed via Simulcast are archived automatically, the company said.

[Vimeo Acquires Livestream, Launches Vimeo Live] 

Publish to Social does away with the need to upload videos separately to different social platforms. It also increases the reach of a producer’s content because social platforms like Facebook favor native uploads and give them greater visibility, Vimeo said. The new tool also offers producers a way to track plays, likes and other stats on a side-by-side basis across platforms.

More information is available in a blog from Vimeo.